If you look at Wikipedia’s Pangaea animation, you can see that Alaska was always near the north pole. The Canadian geologist Steve McIntyre put Chu vs Baron on page 1 today.

The point of Barton’s is obvious. The world was much warmer hundreds of millions of years ago (and sea levels were probably also much higher).

So was Chu clueless, or does he afraid to admit this is true, and spawn more AGW doubters?

The long term temperature on earth has been declining, and its a good thing, because the earth probably started out as a fireball. This is not really relevant to CO2/Global warming, but Chu’s response reinforces my feeling that most political types are clueless.

Nonsense came from Boehner, when he tried to associate EPA regulation of CO2 to cancer. Clearly there is more to EPA regulation than just cancer.

Polosi stated that we should be using natural gas rather than fossil fuels.

Waxman recently stated that if we don’t do something about global warming the tundra will evaporate.

They passed the Daylight Savings Time law to save energy, and there is an Indiana study that shows it wastes energy, so I expect them to do the same with well meaning CO2 laws.

And I’d rather have intelligence involved in ANY decision-making process, ESPECIALLY at these levels of policy-making.

>”It seems that Humanity also thrives more when temps are warner, not colder.”
Don’t you think you’re oversimplifying here?
Or why do you think we live on EARTH and not Mercury?

If you think you stumped Energy Secretary, Dr. Steven Chu, then you are not someone that should be making decisions that involve science because science is way beyond your comprehension level.

As to AGW, it has not been proved. The models developed by proponents to support it or opponents to deny it are flawed and can not be considered as proof. Why? Any computer model must reflect all (or at least a very high percentage of) the variables that effect the outcome. Scientists are not sure of the all the cycles or variability of cycles that effect the orbit of the sun, the orbit of earth, the heating, cooling, and fluctuations of ocean currents, albedo effects of cosmic rays relative to solar and planetary magnetic fields, Solar maximums and minimums, etc. Need I go on? Yet politicians are being focused by Al “the sky is falling” Gore and others in manner that will expend incredible amounts of money to fix a problem that has not actually been proven to exist.

Certainly the impact of Human activity on this planet is evident. Does it effect the climate? Probably. To the extent the fearmongers rant on about? Probably not. Do we really want to reduce that atmospheric trace element CO2? Probably not since plant life thrives on it, and we thrive when plants thrive. It seems that Humanity also thrives more when temps are warner, not colder.

Anaconda’s rant is equally spurious. We just don’t know. Climate scientists need to keep acquiring the data necessary to provide answers to the climate puzzle. The “we’re out of time” hype, is just that. Hype.

I did write Rep. Barton and hopefully in a very civil manner doing my best with a non-geologist knowledge to explain where the oil came from. I did point out that it would be really easy for him to get the knowledge he was seeking by asking any petroleum geologist, they could set them straight.

And Chu really didn’t get a chance to answer the question to its fullest even in its most simple terms, and he was interrupted by Barton more than once.

I am still awaiting a reply from Rep. Barton, I think I will stop holding my breath, I’m getting dizzy and don’t want to kill any brain cells. I might start thinking like Barton.

Glaciers are melting all around the globe, islands are already sinking (try asking those living on the pacific islands of Palau or Kiribati), climate change is already being measured.

The global heating spike in 1998 was exceptional because of the strong El Nino effect, and while the years since then have been a smidgin cooler the upward temperature trend remains.

Despite the quiet sun, despite the Milankovitch cycles and other factors that should be making our climate cooler.

The Anthropogenic Greenhouse Effect is a reality. Science demonstrates it and the verdict is now in with the Deniers in the same position as the pro-tobacco mob.

@ Sili : Denmark the centre of the universe? Why yes, it is! So’s Adelaide! So’s everywhere. Everything else – all the other galaxies, galactic clusters and superclusters, etc .. are moving away from us.* So we are the centre of the universe – because there isn’t one! It all depends on your point of view.

At least that’s my understanding of the cosmology involved.

* Well, okay, most of the other galaxy’s anyway; Andromeda’s on its way to merge & the Magellanic Clouds are gravitationally bound satellites of our Milky Way but that’s different!

April has in fact been exceptionally warm. I’ve been out tanning since before Easter.

Oh. You don’t live in Denmark? How odd. I was sure Denmark was the centre of the Universe.

http://autismnaturalvariation.blogspot.com/2008/06/anthropogenic-global-warming-is.html

The key thing here is that, if oil and gas are not formed in the way that we thought, then there could be huge reserves, orders of magnitude more than we believe, in geological zones where we have not been looking. Experiment, however, has failed to discover any.

1 – the Cowboys are probably a much more interesting subject to him than climate change.
2 – global warming is not important at all

I will assume this man got his rank in the Energy and Commerce Committee during the days of Republican domination. He appears to be as responsible as anyone else in Washington for the failure of the USA to advance any meaningful clean energy legislation. Hopefully this time he will stand by helplessly as saner minds get something done.

Yeesh… won’t be long before congress just addresses our science officials by yelling “Hey nerd!” Also, it sounds like Mr. Barton was channeling Master Shake for a few seconds.

Frylock: “I can’t just bring you back from the dead!”
Shake: “Come on… you’re like a math guy!”
Frylock: “I don’t think math is going to bring you back to life.”
Shake: “Well then what the hell is it for!?”

He presented his little bomb with almost no time for a decent response (I wonder if that was planned, but it doesn’t matter that much).

Representative Barton is a politician. Politicians live by the the minimally informative slogan. Sound bites are better for generating a reflexive response, rather than an intelligent one. Scientists do not do well at sound bites.

I have one simple question for you in the last 6 seconds. . . .

I don’t see anything about this that suggests it was not planned. He clearly is aware of the time.

The linked videos on the seem to be supporting the idea that this is a win for Rep. Barton. The odd thing is that they are wordless, except for one, that seems to be more of a parody, but maybe it is just an example of Poe’s Law.

IVAN3MAN,

RE: Harrison Bergeron.
If it should ever come to that, the role of the United States Handicapper General would be taken by none other than Ann Coulter!

A true Handicapper General would make her cover up her legs (her one, OK two, good part, OK parts). Once people are not distracted by her legs, and actually listen to what comes out of her mouth, her popularity will take a hit. OTOH, maybe I am just unreasonably optimistic.

Just curious, Anaconda… since the sun is at a minimum, and the solar output is currently below average, and the global temperatures are staying pretty much constant despite that… Doesn’t that kind of give evidence supporting AGW?

Since Anaconda is an all round science denialist, he also supports some “Electric Universe” crackpot ideas. I suppose he will insist that solar output is steady despite the observations, depending on (likewise observationally falsified) currents that it will meet on its trajectory through space.

@ Scott:

About the only things we are certain of is that CO2 is increasing, mostly by us, and temperatures have increased in the last century.

I would suggest you learn the relevant science before making erroneous claims on a science blog and look like a fool needlessly.

The best up to date information here could be the IPCC reports, which regularly assesses the entire science of climatology on this matter. From the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007) “The Physical Science Basis”:

It is extremely unlikely (<5%) that the global pattern of warming during the past half century can be explained without external forcing, and very unlikely that it is due to known natural external causes alone. The warming occurred in both the ocean and the atmosphere and took place at a time when natural external forcing factors would likely have produced cooling.
Greenhouse gas forcing has very likely caused most of the observed global warming over the last 50 years. This conclusion takes into account observational and forcing uncertainty, and the possibility that the response to solar forcing could be underestimated by climate models. It is also robust to the use of different climate models, different methods for estimating the responses to external forcing and variations in the analysis technique.

So we know with a certainty approaching beyond reasonable doubt that AGW is a fact. [You have to look up their report to find out what uncertainty the italics represents.]

Now, it is nutty to dispute already known and validated (here by repetitive measurements) facts. What we need is to start discuss if we want to do something about it (probably), what we can do, and how much money and fertile land (and species!) it will save us to make the effort.

Or, science forbid, how much money and resources we will loose if we instead continue to paddle around in the slowly heating bucket unconcernedly like the fabled frog.

Bess Wynell Buice and Larry Linus Barton.

LOLTEXANS!!!11!!

a) “Sense” is never common, and

b) it often leads one to erroneous conclusions…especially in maters that require a lot of education to understand in the first place. “Common Sense” is usually no more than lazy thinking. You hear it a LOT on Talk Radio and Fox News (and elsewhere, of course, but they are the worst, IMO). It is the secret of Rush Limbaugh’s entire appeal.

Tell me about it. Honestly, I haven’t looked at the statistics, but I would hope that the seemingly high number of wingnuts is due to the large population as a whole, and that only the wakkos make the news. There are actually a lot of strong science supporters in Texas (even on the SBOE), you just don’t hear about them.

Rick Perry is a runner, and at age 58, he ran a half-marathon this year under 1:50, and that’s not too shabby. That’s about the only good thing I have to say about him.

“Do not lump all Texans in with this idiot. In fact, show me a state that has NEVER elected an idiot for a politician.”

Greg – I feel for you; I live in Tennessee and am not proud of it at all. But so far our politicains have stayed out of trouble relatively speaking.

Please comment on the wildly disproportionate number of total wing nuts coming from your state (including Joe Barton, Tom Delay, Rick Perry, George Bush, John Cornyn, Ron Paul, Karl Rove). This doesn’t include the seriously deluded half of the TBOE including its chairman Don McLeroy, who would willingly insert their brand of conservative protestantism in the science classroom and science text books.

What I saw in Barton in this particular clip is completely reprehensible. He presented his little bomb with almost no time for a decent response (I wonder if that was planned, but it doesn’t matter that much). His question was loaded, or so he thought – he intended to make Chu look bad. Ironically he made himself look (insert any number of strong modifiers here – like “incredibly stupid”), exactly like the stereotypes commonly and of course unfairly attributed to all Texans. His follow-ups were further attempts to make Chu look bad. And his smug looks throughout the questioning showed clearly his anti-intellectual mindset – one that was homegrown in a region of the USA where way way too much of it is around. So not only does that clip show a high degree of ignorance on Barton’s part, it also shows devious behavior. He remids me of a sleazy trial lawyer.

This man looks to be is a very ignorant and dishonest and conniving government employee, in a position where he can do some damage. Unfortunately he has partners in crime, plenty of them.

I now look forward to 2010 – it looks like if a few things go right some of these wing nuts will either be gone or be so weak that they are completely irrelevant. We are not quite there yet.